


we’ll hide in the back room

by portions_forfox



Category: Gossip Girl, Skins (UK)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: five things that never happened to tony stonem and/or nate archibald</p>
            </blockquote>





	we’ll hide in the back room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [three_things_sid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/three_things_sid/gifts).



> [lesoleilluna](http://lesoleilluna.livejournal.com) asked @ [this meme](http://portions-forfox.livejournal.com/47054.html) for tony stonem or nate archibald, and seeing as how i naturally function at an incredibly cracky level, my brain immediately jumped to _tony/nate_. and i fucked up both canons according to my liking. awwww yiss!

**ONE.**

Tony sits at home in the driveway, car still heated by the drive back from the airport, winding down with its ticking noises and its groans and sighs. Inside the light’s on over the kitchen table and Effy is in Mum’s lap like when they were just kids, like before she grew up and turned into something so unwieldy, something so distant, something so strikingly similar to himself it scares him, just a little bit. Effy’s eyes are closed—she’s not crying, god, it’s been years since she really cried—but there’s a furrow in her brow, one little wrinkle over the arch of her eyes, and Mum is holding Eff’s head to her shoulder, this inexorably motherly gesture. Petting her hair, slow, steady. She looks off down the hallway at nothing, crying. Mum is always crying these days.

The car is starting to get cold again, the press of the outside chill aching at the windows, and Tony blows quick puffs of air out through his mouth, shuffles his hands together, rubs at his arms. He looks beside him to the passenger seat, starts to say something about Effy when they were younger, something about when she was a little girl, something maybe about when their parents still loved each other, starts to admit to an empty chair, _I miss_ —

But. Sid isn’t sitting there.

Inside the house Mum starts shaking silently, shoulders rocking Effy’s head, and Effy’s frown deepens but she doesn’t open her eyes. She won’t.

“There’s nothing left for me here,” Tony says aloud to an empty car. He’s going to New York.

 

**TWO.**

The reception is all white lace and pink lemonade, a violin string quartet on an outdoor platform and blue skies for miles ahead. (Nate can’t really force the idea out of his head that somehow, Blair organized that as well.)

Dan slips away from the bride for a minute—Blair’s already busy enough shaking hands, touching elbows, shoulders; she greets everyone with a warm honey smile and a barely noticeable underlying smugness. She’s Blair, she’s allowed that. 

For someone who hates tuxedoes as vehemently as he does, Dan looks awfully good in one. He hovers by Nate’s table, swirling a wine glass the wrong way while Nate tugs on the end of the tablecloth, smirking.

“You stole my wedding, man,” Nate scolds. “Blair’s been planning this for us since we were, what, like five years old?”

Dan looks visibly relieved, lets the tension fall from his forehead and his lips curl up. “Yeah, well,” he replies, the peek of a smile while his head tilts to one side and his shoulders shrug, “if it were me I’d totally just let you have it, but. Not sure the wife would be too happy with me.”

“Oh god,” and Nate rolls his eyes, knocks his head against the back of his chair. “ _Please_ tell me you’re not going to start calling Blair ‘the wife’ now, Dan, fucking _please_.”

Dan shrugs like, _what can you do_ , full-on grinning now as he takes the empty seat next to Nate, stretches out his legs in the grass. “I’ll have to run it by the wife first,” he grunts in his manly-man voice, and Nate laughs. There’s a lull, and Nate looks around at the dozens of well-dressed socialites seething with judgment or jealous or most likely both, swirling the aged white wine in their goblets, the jade green grass at their feet; Blair is up at the front, her eyes bright and her smile wide. She wore a little white headband for the wedding.

“It’s just weird, man,” Nate admits, starts tugging on the tablecloth again. “That this was all supposed to be…me. That I’m, you know…alone. Again.”

Dan frowns, sets his glass down. He’s hardly had any anyway. “Well, listen,” (he starts to smirk a little), “if you’re looking to feel less alone I’m _sure_ there are a few—nay, dare I say a _multitude_ of young ladies here who would be more than happy to make Nate Archibald feel…less alone.”

Nate chuckles, then sighs. Admits, “I’m just tired of girls always getting the best of me, man. You know?” His voice drops a bit and he shifts the tablecloth in a circle, mumbles, “They’re always getting the best of me.”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees, the smile kind of stuck on his face as he nods his head, slow. “I know.”

 

There’s this guy at the wedding, one of Dan’s Brooklyn hipster friends with glasses and a lowdown gravel voice, lips too big for his face, and Nate watches his mouth while he talks and drinks lots of glasses of wine and later in the bathroom he grinds the kid into the wall till his glasses skew off his forehead and hit the floor, his too-big lips grunting _uh_ in a rhythmic pattern and the stubble at his neck grating close against Nate’s cheek.

 

**THREE.**

For the first couple of months, Tony lives with Sid and Cassie, acting as the third wheel for every Chinese takeout dinner and trying to ignore the sound of them shagging through the thin paper walls. Cassie’s very vocal; it’s a difficult task.

He spends his days wanking to old stock memories of Michelle, replayed scenarios of that time at the beach, that time in the car, that time in her mother’s bed. When that wears out he reverts to the pervert that he is and gets off to the sound of Cassie’s screams, her little whimpers and moans and gasps through the walls, finishes at around the same time she does. Once he realizes that he’s heard it all before he gets desperate, turns to Internet porn and Sid’s dusty dirty magazines still packed in boxes, but he’s never been able to get off on porn—he depends on a good story. Fuck, what he _needs_ is something different.

And that’s when his mind, fuck it, slips away to recreations of those few fleeting run-ins with Maxxie; hard jaw, greedy hands, musk. Yeah.

 

**FOUR.**

Nate thinks it’s starting to get a little out of hand when Dan and Serena and Blair all give him shit for it, toss egg rolls at his face from across the dinner table at Dan’s loft, giggling with glee and miming blowjobs by shoving their tongues into the inside of their cheeks at every possible opportunity. (There are a lot more possible opportunities than you might think.) NSIC, they call it. Nate’s Sexual Identity Crisis.

“It’s not an identity crisis!” Nate insists, laughing and dodging an air-born noodle. “It’s not like I’m…I don’t know, entering into a committed relationship with some dude—”

“Some dude!” Dan repeats, while Serena opts for, “He’s entering into _something_ all right,” which is quickly succeeded by a three-person high-five. So like a high-fifteen.

“I’m just—” Nate presses on, “—I’m just _sleeping_ with them, occasionally. That’s all.”

“Them?” Dan probes.

“Dudes,” Nate clarifies.

“ ‘That’s all!’ ” Blair reminds them in a state of unadulterated joy. “ ‘ _That’s all_!’ ”

“Whatever, you guys,” Nate shakes his head, blushing, trying not to laugh. “I gotta head out anyway.” He stands up, slides his jacket off the back of the chair.

“Wait, where are you going?” Dan frowns, leaning forward.

“A…” Nate winces. “…bar.”

He walked right into that one, man. “What kind of bar?” Serena wants to know, eyes gleaming deviously. “A gay bar?”

“No,” Nate lies skillfully. “The other kind.”

 

(So, it may be true that Diana turned out to be a liar and a fake and his ex-best friend’s mom and stuff, _but_. 

She did have a really hot accent.)

 

**FIVE.**

In the morning Nate wakes up and the guy he only slightly remembers having sex with last night is at the edge of his bed, pale sliver of skin at the small of his back, spine visible as he bends over and pulls on his socks.

“Oh,” Nate starts to say, his voice still groggy as he sits up. “You’re leaving.” He watches the movement of skin over muscles in front of him, the narrow hips and shifting muscles at the shoulders. Scratches the back of his own neck. “Did you want, like, some coffee or…” _think British_ — “tea or something?”

The guy glances over his shoulder and smiles, tight. “I’m quite all right, thanks,” he answers. And okay. Okay. So the accent’s a little bit sexy.

“Your accent’s sexy,” Nate tells him, because _god_ , he is not good at this game-playing thing. That’s probably his real problem in life. He has no idea how to cheat someone. He had no idea how not to be sincere.

The guy slides one leg beneath him on the bed and turns, tilting his head quizzically and smiling, just a bit. “Is that why you slept with me?” he wonders.

“No,” Nate shakes his head. “My friends were teasing me about the having-sex-with-dudes thing, so I did it to spite them.”

The guy cocks his head. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how spite works,” he says, amused.

“Oh,” Nate answers. “Well.”

He sits up suddenly. “Hey,” he offers, “I really think—I mean, you seem…I just think—” He puffs out a breath, the hair on his forehead (still a little bit sticky with sweat; it was a busy night) lifting up and falling down again. “God,” he laughs, “I’m bad at this.” He bites his lip, squints, hesitant. “Do you want some coffee, man?” he offers. “I really think we should get some coffee.”

The guy’s watching him closely, eyes trailing over Nate’s hair and face and eyes and mouth, and Nate can kind of tell he’s not quite sure what to make of him. Brits are supposed to be like really repressed with their feelings or something, whatever. Maybe he’s never met someone who can just fucking _say_ what they’re thinking. Or maybe he just likes Nate’s mouth. (Except—that one’s not really a maybe.)

Finally he nods once, kind of slowly. “Okay,” he answers. “That sounds—that sounds fine.”

“Cool,” Nate beams, and then he remembers, sticks out his hand. “My name’s Nate, by the way.”

The guy looks at the hand once, then shakes it, grinning. “Cool,” he says. “I’m Tony.”


End file.
